The First Settlement in Space

A key attribute of Space Settlement Design Competition scenarios
is that the first settlement is built very quickly--in about a dozen
years. The real reason for this is that the Competition organizers want
to offer a chronology of widely varying scenarios that participating
students could see during their working careers, or at least during their
natural lifetimes. It would be less interesting for students to work on
a space settlement design planned to operate a half-century after they
expect to retire.

The Competition organizers do believe that once the first settlement is
built in space, and a mining, refining, manufacturing, and transportation
infrastructure is established, economics and ingenuity will enable
large settlements to be built in fewer than 15 years. This is akin to
a "Southern California freeway phenomenon", wherein a new freeway is
built into a remote area with very little population, and in just a
few years the freeway is clogged with traffic because the access it
provides enables communities and businesses to be established on its
flanks. Having infrastructure in place makes it easier to get more
infrastructure in place.

But the first settlement is different. The first settlement starts
with nothing. In Earth orbit there is vacuum, a variety of environmental
hazards, unrealized access to extraterrestrial resources, and solar
energy. Nothing more. There is no scheduled transportation service,
no port to put into for supplies or repairs, no grocery store, no
refueling station, no building supply store, no dirt to grow food in,
no water. Nothing.

We do offer an incentive for why it would be important to build the
first settlement quickly. Whether or not one believes that global warming
is a real threat, if conclusive evidence were provided that it would
cause global extinction within a lifetime, then unlimited resources
would become available to stop it. Studies have shown that a solar
shield at the Earth - Sun L1 libration point (a point in space about
900,000 miles away where orbital mechanics enables a satellite to stay
in place between the Earth and Sun) need only reduce sunlight by 0.5%,
and the entire global warming threat goes away. The shield would have
to be almost the size of Texas. The Space Settlement Design Competition
scenarios are based on the premise that the first space settlement would
be built as a construction base for such a solar shield. The urgency
of saving the Earth would put a high priority on building that space
settlement as quickly as possible. So, how do we propose that the very
first space settlement--named Alexandriat in the Competition--could be
built in only a dozen years? Even the optimistic NASA studies of the
1970's predicted a 22-year construction schedule for the first settement.

The simple answer is that construction happens quickly because it
has to happen quickly; the situation for the Earth is urgent. The only
question for the designers is HOW to get it operating quickly. We start
with the assumption that Alexandriat doesn't have to be beautiful or
elegant or even durable enough to last longer than the construction
process for the solar shield. It has to be functional, it has to be
self-sufficient, it has to be comfortable enough that the people living
there won't go crazy, and it has to provide facilities for building the
solar shield. Anything else is fluff.

We also add an assumption that the solar shield--with the space
settlement required for its construction--is such a high priority for
the world's peoples that conventional practices of protecting company
proprietary data and national technologies are set aside until the
project is completed. As in World War II, innovative designs developed
by one company are licensed to other companies and even other nations,
in order to get the job done. No one company could fulfill a contract
to complete this project. Even with unlimited budget, there are not
enough qualified engineers and technicians in any one nation who could
be made available to complete this project quickly. The effort must be
inter-company and multi-national. Money may be no object, but the number
of available engineers and technicians limits how fast it can be spent.

The Foundation Society initiates the project by assembling a team of
top managers and engineers from established aerospace companies. The
stakes are high, so virtually anybody who is needed can be excused
from current duties. The core team is relatively small, to enable
quick decision-making; perhaps five executive managers, ten technical
managers, and 100 engineers. Before beginning the design process,
this team establishes design requirements and guidelines that make
the settlement easier to build. Artificial gravity of 0.5 g and a 10
psi atmosphere are entirely adequate for human existence, but these
reductions from Earth surface conditions reduce the stresses in the
structure so that construction is more feasible. To save design time, the
basic torus shape described in the 1970's studies can be defined as the
baseline. The details, however, are completely new--different materials,
different construction techniques, modifications to accomplish the solar
shield construction project, updated interior features.

Simultaneously, a Human Resources team arranges for the employees
who will work on the project. The most challenging aspect of building
a huge project quickly is hiring and coordinating the tens or hundreds
of thousands of people needed to make it happen. With nearly full
employment of technical people in the United States, Canada, Western
Europe, Australia, and Japan, the necessary employees must be found
elsewhere. The companies of these nations are contracted to do more of
what they do well--in support of the project, they build and operate more
assets that it is known will be needed: launch vehicles, rocket engines,
special-purpose satellites, space tugs (modified for long-distance cargo
deliveries), and space stations. They conduct the research to develop
new materials, control systems, robots, and improved manufacturing
methods. Although no crewed lunar landing craft has been built since
the early 1970's, corporations open up their vaults of proprietary
designs and reveal that valid conceptual designs exist to augment
Constellation program vehicles; they were just waiting for somebody to
pay for development. Construction of all aspects of needed transportation
infrastructure is underway within seven months.

The vast majority of effort on the settlement and solar shield,
however, is the "grunt work" of detailed designing, analyzing, testing,
building, transportation planning, and assembly scheduling of the
required components. For these tasks, the Foundation Society taps into
vast reserves of underemployed but well-trained and highly skilled
individuals in Russia, Eastern Europe, India, Pakistan, China, Brazil,
and several other countries not typically considered at the forefront of
innovative space technology development. Specialized training is provided
as required, sometimes in cooperation with universities. Coordinating all
of these efforts worldwide is a huge task. The core team compartmentalizes
the requirements into portions that can be accomplished by the various
teams world-wide. They very specifically define the interfaces between
the pieces that are designed by the different teams. They travel
extensively to assure that each team has the information it needs,
and is on schedule and producing its own products as expected. As each
team finishes a part of the project, another part is assigned. Early
tasks define details that enable construction to begin on the overall
shell of the structure and the solar shield manufacturing facility.
The designers proceed into deeper and deeper details--for example,
electrical power distribution, sewage processing, farming techniques;
then street maps, municipal buildings, and parks; finally the details
inside individual businesses and residences.

Quick construction of the space settlement requires development of
new techniques and unconventional methods. Transportation from Earth's
surface to space is a bottleneck, so utilization of non-terrestrial
resources speeds the process. Some of the tools proposed in the old
NASA 1970's studies are "dusted off" and improved, most notably the
electromagnetic mass driver concept for efficiently launching materials
off the moon. Refining vast quantities of materials in space requires
time to develop zero-g refining processes and build the refineries,
so use of materials in their natural state also speeds the process. The
ideal situation would be to build the settlement from dirt. And, as much
as possible, that's how it's done.

Dirt has been proven, by several methods, to be a fine construction
material for structures in compression--arches and domes that are designed
to keep their shape against the pull of gravity. Acceptable structures
for a mining camp on the lunar surface can be built in a matter of days,
and the construction technique is simple enough that it can be automated
with robots. "Superadobe" construction is accomplished by compacting
dirt--any kind of dirt--into long tubes of flexible material. Rugged
fabric that can handle the space environment was developed for the Mars
Pathfinder mission in the mid-1990's, and with some minor adjustments
to the manufacturing process, miles of lightweight superadobe tubing
are available as soon as the necessary vehicles can ship it to the
lunar surface. Robots are programmed to fill the tubing and stack it,
layer upon layer, to form domes for buildings; the process is much like
stuffing sausage casings. Each layer of superadobe is about six inches
high and two feet thick. After the domes are formed, some additional
shielding is provided by piling loose dirt on top of them, and they are
sealed to be airtight with a glaze on the interiors. The additional dirt
also provides insulation to protect the interiors from the extremes of
lunar temperatures.

After the lunar base buildings are completed, the robots continue
to pack superadobe tubes. When the mass driver is completed, it is
immediately employed in the business of launching superadobe. The
technology of electromagnetic levitation that makes the mass driver
work had not been implemented on a commercial scale when the 1970's
NASA studies were conducted; now, essentially all that is required to
build a lunar mass driver is to deliver components of the tracks on which
high-speed trains operate, and to modify and adjust the power and control
systems for this new application. As proposed in the 1970's NASA studies,
the mass driver only sends material to a collection point in space, from
which it is transported to the space settlement construction site. One
of the design teams conducts a "trade study" to optimize the size of
each mass-driven package and the frequency at which packages are sent;
another team identifies an easy way to bind each superadobe package so it
will stay intact through the launch process (the 1970's study proposed
launching 40-lb packages at the rate of one or two per second; larger
packages are preferred to enable longer lengths of superadobe to be sent
in each package). The mass driver requires a lot of power; continuous
solar power is acquired on the moon by building at one of the poles.

In order for superadobe to be useful as a construction material for the
space settlement, however, a means must be found for keeping it stable in
tension--the settlement's rotation puts forces into the outside surface
of the structure that act to pull it apart. Some of this force can be
reacted by using a superadobe tubing material that is exceedingly strong
in tension. Only the outside surface needs this capability, however,
so it is not necessary to go to the expense of making all of the tubing
from more exotic materials. It is sufficient to build a mesh or net of
high-strength fibers--perhaps similar in appearance to chicken wire--to
encase the outer surface of superadobe. More stability is acquired by
weaving the superadobe to form the torus; the relatively short lengths
that can be launched by the lunar mass driver are as strong as continuous
superadobe coils when they are woven. The necessary wall thickness for
radiation shielding is acquired by weaving multiple layers of superadobe.

Also adopted from the 1970's studies is the location for the first
settlement, an orbit around the Earth-Moon L5 libration point. It's
closer and easier to get to than the solar shield construction location,
and there are advantages for future infrastructure development. Only
the materials for the solar shield, with a minimal construction crew,
need to go all the way to the Sun-Earth L1 libration point for solar
shield assembly.

The construction process for the settlement starts with minimal
materials. A small spherical hub is built as a "construction shack"
for the engineers and technicians who are responsible for assembly
of the settlement. They attach thick kevlar ropes (coated to prevent
deterioration by the sun) to the outside of the hub. The first narrow
woven strip of superadobe (reinforced to withstand tension) is over three
miles long. Its ends are joined in a hoop and the ropes from the hub are
attached at regular intervals. When small ion engines spin the hub, the
ropes tighten, and a spindly mile-wide "wagon wheel" takes shape. From
that point, the spokes and rim are built up to their final dimensions
as more material arrives and can be added. Living quarters on the rim
are added, sealed, made habitable, and populated in small sections,
so that at various stages of construction the structure resembles
a large necklace of chunky blocks. After several hundred residents
arrive, the solar shield manufacturing area is added to the hub, so
that Alexandriat's primary function can be fulfilled as quickly as
possible. Construction is automated as much as possible, with robots
programmed to assemble sections of superadobe into the torus sections
and seal them in preparation for use.

Some other materials required in large quantities are also acquired
from the moon. They do, however, require refining of the native materials,
and ores are harvested from various lunar sites to acquire the desired
elements. Oxygen, silicon, titanium, aluminum, iron, magnesium, calcium,
and sodium are present in significant quantities on the moon, all bound
up in oxides. Separating the components can be a difficult business,
especially when rare (on the moon) catalysts like carbon are required for
conventional processes. The elements are there, however, and unleashing
thousands of creative chemists world-wide inspires some breakthrough
separation and refining technologies. Silicon is made into solar cells;
sodium makes a fine reflective coating for reflector mirrors; composites,
glass, and ceramics are made from several of these materials; and each of
the metals is used in appropriate applications. Composites and ceramics
are easier to make from lunar materials than metals, and are used for
most interior applications--walls of housing units and other buildings,
furniture, plumbing and fixtures, bodies and chassis of vehicles for
interior use, paving for streets and walkways, doors, cabinets, housings
for computers and other equipment, robot bodies, and components of common
appliances. As many products as possible are made from lunar materials to
reduce the imports required to be launched from Earth. Some of the most
mundane materials cause the greatest challenges, and dozens of teams
work simultaneously until a solution is found for each--processes are
developed to make cloth, string, paper, inks and dyes, flexible tubing and
insulation, bicycle tires, paint, coatings for various uses, adhesives,
cleaning agents, and other products either exclusively or primarily
from lunar materials. With the exception of station-keeping motors and
computerized control systems, the entire solar shield is constructed of
lunar materials. The importance of the assignments brings out the utmost
creativity in every person working on them, and miracles occur.

The most difficult substances to acquire from the moon are ironically
the ones that are most common on Earth, air and water. At first,
there is no choice; huge quantities of air and water are transported
from Earth. Recycling and reclamation are refined to an art form;
any losses must be made up with very expensive and time-consuming
shipments. Ultimately, technologies are developed to divert small comets
and asteroids to augment lunar resources.

With the introduction of microbes, lunar soil provides suitable
growing media for agriculture. The early diet of Alexandriat's
residents is carefully planned to yield the most nutrition possible
for the least amount of land area, resources, growing time, and risk
of crop failure. Yield per acre is increased by use of hydroponics
for many crops. Quick growing times for vegetables, squash, and some
berries causes these foods to be much more common in the early diet than
grain-based breads and pastas. Recipes adapted from primitive subsistence
cultures provide good food that can be grown with less expenditure of
resources. Rabbits and chickens augment lentils and beans as a source
of protein. With time, a greater variety of foods is produced in the
settlement, but highly processed foods like most breakfast cereals and
salted snacks require manufacturing resources that the settlement can
ill afford to expend on alternative flavors and textures of calories. A
few tins of Pringles tucked into the precious weight allowance of a
passenger from Earth are cause for a party at Alexandriat.

With commitment, cooperation, virtually unlimited budget, and a lot
of luck, it can all come together in a mere dozen years. Humans have
done it before and have legends to prove it: the P-51 Mustang went from
concept to production in just months during World War II, one of Henry
Kaiser's companies built an entire ship in one day, the Apollo project
went from a Presidential speech to a lunar landing in less than a decade,
the Trans-Alaska Pipeline went from idea to completion in 12 years (only
three years of actual construction). And the most amazing thing happens
when these miracles occur: people accept them as normal events. Some of
the technology stretches that build Alexandriat are adopted to improve
processes on Earth. The influx of income into Third World countries
raises the level of prosperity as economies are jump-started. Teams
of engineers that cause miracles to occur for Alexandriat turn their
attention to miracles that need to be performed at home. Perhaps more
importantly, great human achievements inspire people to realize that
they really can create miracles. When that happens, anything is possible.